WARNER, Sylvia Townsend.

£400 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The True Heart. First edition, first impression, signed by the author on the title page and uncommon thus. Warner stated that the novel, which retells the story of Cupid and Psyche from Apuleius, was "inspired by a creek, running slowly" that she had discovered on a walk in the Essex marshes. The work was contemporarily praised for its "humour, lyricism, and tenderness" (Orlando).In her writing Warner "shares as many similarities as differences with the high modernists who dominated the literary landscape of the interwar period" (Plock & Murray, p. 725). She was close friends with many of those modernists, and alongside her novels published a collection of poetry, The Espalier (1925). Warner worked against the societal norms throughout her literary career as well as in her own life: she was active in the communist party, travelled to Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War to work with the Red Cross, espoused "unconventional moral fables" in her Kingdoms of Elfin (1977) and lived as a married couple with her partner, the poet Valentine Ackland, for 38 years. Their love letters were published in 1998 under the title I'll Stand By You and "constitute an extraordinary lesbian love story" (ODNB).

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.